


Summertime Sadness

by whitesilverandmercury



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin
Genre: M/M, Multi, Threesome, more to come - Freeform, viking raid, ww2 graphic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-04
Updated: 2014-07-15
Packaged: 2018-02-07 09:07:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1893342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whitesilverandmercury/pseuds/whitesilverandmercury
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of short ficlets from various fic prompts. // from tumblr: song lyrics or time eras; possible ships: erejean, jeanmarco, jearmin, ereri, eremin, eruri, eruren; tags will be added accordingly</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Given to the Gods

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> tw: viking violence.

**VIKING AU**

_JEAN/ARMIN_

* * *

 

_Never before in Britain has such a terror appeared._

793, Lindisfarne.

Armin did not really know God.

He did not really know how to read or write, either, though he was secretly trying to learn under the tutelage of the physician who sometimes welcomed him in to the infirmary to watch bloodletting and study afflictions like he might one day put any of it to use himself.

Armin had never really known God. Living in the Abbey—yes, flitting about amongst bells and beautiful stone, hewn oak thatch strewn away and replaced by lead, and the puddles of sunlight that fell between the mossy arcades—living in the Abbey perhaps he should have learned about God. But there was something haunting about the rosaries and the litanies that felt darker and more mysterious than God, spiritual like bare toes in warm dirt and the spray of the ocean against closed eyelids.

He worked in the garden, and he worked in the kitchen, and he worked with the blacksmith sometimes, too. He worked just about anywhere anyone needed a little towheaded boy abandoned by his own parents to work, while his grandfather studied under the Abbot and out in the Northern sunshine, freckles popped up in an arc across his nose from the sun. That is, when the ocean fog didn’t swallow up everything but the blurred sea and sky as far as one could see. He wasn’t thick like other knaves; he wasn’t crude and rugged. There wasn’t much else he could do.

Because Armin did not really know God, he did not really trust God. He trusted the dust in the chapel, the velvet shiver between fingertips and gold-kissed paintings on the walls. He trusted the salty breeze and the silvery sky. He trusted dinner, he trusted bed, he trusted sunrise. He did not trust routine, however; routine in this place was as cunning as God, and nobody would ever tell him what lay beyond the walls of Lindisfarne like they thought he couldn’t conjecture, wouldn’t understand, shouldn’t know.

_Drink, for the wind blows cold and drink for The Wolf runs free._

_Drink to the ships with the sails like wings and drink to the storm-tossed seas…_

The silent gale on which they blew into the waters was eerie. It was a ringing, a bass chord below the very earth underfoot strummed to signal their arrival. It was a sigh of defeat in the bones of the place, a rustling of fate. They’d said once or twice that Charlemagne did good deeds, but Armin had thought _godless_ was more like it.

Fire.

The world was on fire.

Screams, and cries, and wailing, and chants, and barbaric shouts, the foreign attackers fighting not as though they wanted to but as though they were frightened for their lives.

“The Gospels, save the Gospels—”

“May God see you as the beast you are—”

“‘ _After fires and swords, crosses and beasts, the Saints are borne with great triumph into the Kingdom and rest! These are the ones who came forth in great tribulation and washed their stoles and made them white in the Blood of the Lamb!_ ’”

And the monks and the rest of the priory hissing holy words and denunciations in the face of such demons, their only righteous weapons. Their hymns and curses seemed to hurt the crowds more than the axes and spears and daggers that soiled dark monastery robes, and Armin ran like a coward.

Rather, like a brave man, because it would take a brave man to face the world alone if he survived.

They were killing monks; they were killing women; they were throwing their bodies into the sea to bounce and break on the rocks under the sudsy swirl. The shrieks for mercy couldn’t break through the churning clouds overhead, and Armin couldn’t tell the difference anymore between the ring of metal and the ring of death. No, the earth had cracked open and this was Hell.

_I asked, ‘Where has my life fled, where has gone its force?’_

_‘It’s given to the gods,’ she said, ‘come look into the source.’_

He crested a rolling verdant hill outside the stacked-stone walls. The wind carried the sounds away from him; or it was the urge to faint, struggling to tear him down the way the wind itself yanked and clawed at him. _How could you, how could you dare, you’ve left them all, how did you escape, you of all people, how did they not catch you, you who they could hoist up and toss at the church and break your bones on all things holy, you weak little worm_ —

At the top of the hill there was a figure.

“ _Run!_ ” Armin cried, breath ripping from his chest. “Run, _run!_ ” He waved; he flailed; he loped up the hill and then stopped short as the figure turned to look curiously down the grass at him, cradling a linden shield, a knife horizontal at the belt, a stamp of utter confusion on the face of a boy not much older than himself—

A violent flurry of elbows and knees, Armin struggled to stop running, to turn, to go a different way, while in the same sharp movements and heart-pounding seconds, the boy descended to meet him in the middle.

The light lit his eyes golden; it kissed his face pale and soft; his narrowed eyes flashed with some unnamed passion; his mouth was open but no words came out; and the wind danced through the mop of lovely hair above his ears, ash-blond grayed from travel and soot, and his silhouette against the sullen sky glowed.

“ _Ah! Draugrinn sér konunginn_ —”

And his voice was like honey and Armin fell down onto the grass and burst into tears.

Fingers, closing on his shoulder. An arm, scooping him up. He was going to die. That pretty dagger on the pretty boy’s side was going to carve right into him and leave him a pretty bloody mess. He cried like a baby, but he did not fight. He could never win. He kicked and swung and wailed and growled like a wild thing but really there seemed much more honor in accepting one’s weaknesses than displaying them all out to be ridiculed. Look at the little worm, wriggling in the barbarian’s grasp!

Oh, he’d never known God, he’d never known the world outside the Abbey—oh God, what a waste of life he’d been—

The hands smoothed the hair out of his face; the hands smeared tears and spit sticky across his cheek. The hands coaxed his eyes open, thumbs dusting eyelashes, prodding eyelids. He hiccupped. He choked on a breath. He thought, if he could just get his hands on that dagger, he could claim an advantage. But he could never take someone’s life; that was not in his judgment. He knew that much.

The hands cradled his face and he thought, _Ah, he’ll choke me to death, then._ Screams. Shouts. Death. _Death_. The boy with the lily hair caught his mouth in his own and it was a kiss. Lips searing their shadows on his skin, petal-soft and yet rich with indulgent abandon. The hands stroked down, following his throat, pressing to his sides, seeking out his pounding heart. The kisses did something to him; the kisses were foreign and they were terrifying but they sparked in him the reminder that he was alive and he _did not want to die_ and so he kissed back because it felt like holding onto that. He threw his arms around the boy, he pressed ever tighter, closer. Imagine that, he had a heartbeat, too, and it matched the rhythm of Armin’s. Kissing, kissing, and he could see saints, and hear hymns, and feel holy, and perhaps it was because he straddled the thin line between fear and hope but he was utterly and wholly defenseless to this sudden, desperate desire. _Love me, love me, don’t kill me, save me_ —

Some, they killed. Others, they drowned. Others yet they herded into their ships, their long narrow painted dragons.

And it was in the belly of a long narrow painted dragon that the boy kissed Armin’s dirty fingertips and sat knees touching knees with him, and gestured with a guilty hand to his own chest as he said, “ _Jean_.”

His name.

Armin didn’t care what his name was; he wanted his arms around him and he wanted to sail away from the stench of blood and ashes. He wanted to kiss. He wanted to breathe in his earthy scent. He wanted to hide in the wool blankets and piles of rope. He threw up because he’d never been on the sea in a ship before and he moaned not because he was sick but because of the way _Jean_ loomed over him, stroking his hair back, whispering magical mysterious sweet things against his cheek—

 _Ek elska þik_ ** _,_** _eg hjelper deg gjerne, jeg følte meg dårlig, græt du?_ _Eg ber om orsak, ek elska þik_ **…**

They left the ruins of Lindisfarne in the fog and the choking smoke.

And through the chaos of fear and pain and grief and other unspoken anguishes, one shimmering thread of thought illuminated the storm:

He was going to see the world.

* * *

 

**_End._ **


	2. Good People.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> tw: ...WWII. mildly graphic. death. bullet wounds.

**WWII AU**

_EREN/ARMIN_

* * *

 

It becomes apparent that nobody is safe in _total war_.

The battle leaves nothing but brokenness. Broken buildings, broken people. Broken streets, broken spirits, broken bodies. Families trapped in their cellars by their own bombed-out house knock frantically to be dug out of the rubble; good Samaritans claw fruitlessly and by the end of the week, the knocking stops. Machine gunfire chases young girls off to fetch their family’s rations of milk and paints the sidewalks red. Phosphorous bombs catch innocent civilians aflame like Medea’s cursed gold dress on the king’s daughter, and children have not yet forgotten how to play hop-scotch and jacks in the same streets where tanks creak and groan and shudder.

The world has become the classical _Danse Macabre_.

Everywhere, everywhere, there is death and there is tragedy and there is pain and it hangs like the smoke from burning buildings, collapsed buildings, rings in the silence like the faraway screech of the air raid sirens. There is no more alive; there is no more dead. No more right, wrong, winning, losing. There is only survival.

_Berlin._

“Arlert! Arlert!”

It’s Springer. _Tat-tat-tat_. Springer, saving his ass again. Thank God for Springer and his little half-salute, clenched-teeth grin and American cigarette. Armin waves with two fingers, breathing hard already.

_Arlert, are we giving up?_

_No, SIR—_

Summers in sailor suits and straw hats, little white gloves and middle-class Venetian resorts seem so very far away now. Like the taste of real tea. God, what he’d give for some real tea—

This is no drill. This is no air raid. This is door-to-door combat, a game of stealth and balls. All of Berlin is hiding. If he looks from this angle of this sloping, crumbling apartment, empty except for the cracked plaster and rats lapping at burst pipes, he can see in a building across the street a German girl crawling up the stairs from the cellar to use the washroom during the small lull in fire.

 _Tat-tat-tat-tat-tat… Rrrrrat-a-tat_ —

Someone screams. The girl slithers like a snake. It’s not her; it’s someone a few blocks away. The girl just wants to use the washroom. Armin watches her; he lets her. He admires her courage as she keeps below the windows so no one will see and shoot. It is the courage of a girl who has done this too many times; it is the courage of a girl far too accustomed to living like a beast in a cage, a ghost in the walls, a hostage with the laughable label of freedom: _civilian_.

Someone has entered the building with him, and like a cat sensing danger, Armin’s instincts tell him it is not Commander Smith.

Voices, from somewhere in the city. Taunts, jeers, threats, terror.

“ _Auflockern!_ ”

“ _Jawohl!_ ”

“ _I am wounded… Ahhh, Mamma, Mamma…_ ”

“ _Zielwechsel nach links_ — _los, los, los!_ ”

Bait.

They are trying to bait the Tommies they fear.

The Germans are always so stupid.

And Armin tastes his heart in his throat as he shimmies down the side of the building, nearly twisting his ankle on a protruding brick. He just wants to see Springer’s shadow, following him; he just wants to know he has not strayed too far from the rest. He just wants to regroup and then spread out again to scour the crooked streets—

“ _Erschiessen!_ ”

 _Rrrrrrrrrat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat_ —

 _Tat-tat-tat_ —

It is not Armin they are shooting at.

It is Armin, however, who in his dive into the safe cave of rubble between building and street takes a bullet to the shoulder and the pain is a cold white light that rattles through him, temporarily blinds him, rings up into his teeth with the metallic tang of an adrenaline rush, throbs on his tongue, slices into his collarbone and vibrates there like a horseshoe—

It blows him off his feet.

With a chatter of ammo and a scrape of his body against concrete and colorful debris, Armin claps a hand over his mouth and swallows the scream.

 _Tat-tat-tat-tat-tat_ —

Where? From where? From who? Have to hide— They don’t realize they hit him.

 _Stupid Germans_.

It has always been a study of beauty’s definition, the way the skeletal remains of a blown-out building can exist smack-dab next to one untouched but to Armin, there isn’t really time to admire the view. With the rapid fire of deadly hide-and-seek echoing overhead, Armin scales the stacked-stone wall into the garden of the next-door apartment. The pain makes it hard to breathe. The pain is keeping him alive, surely. Like a tin soldier in need of winding he steps, he sways, he rattles, he tumbles, he crawls under a lattice with ivy dancing on the wind of war as if to the beat of the gunshots and shouts, and he takes cover there.

* * *

The fighting’s moved four blocks up now.

Eren is somewhere in the rear formation, as directed by Ackerman. He is somewhere amongst ruins, checking for fallen, checking for threats. He can hear Erd kicking through trash. He can see Gunther and Auruo, searching a building. He tries not to look at the freshly bleeding rag doll of a man caught in the crossfire, thrown down on the cobbles like a forgotten plaything of the gods.

It isn’t anything like the Russians, that’s for sure.

But it is still a nightmare.

It is always a nightmare.

He has given up on believing in the Führer since the Führer came knocking at their country house three summers ago, ruffling his hair, taking tea on the stones with his mother, complimenting his socks and his shorts and his fiery eyes and his achievements Keith’s division of the Hitler Youth. No, the moment the Führer took his father away to work atrocities in the camps, Eren’s soul had snapped and there was never any going back to that propaganda-poisoned self.  

He has no idea there is anyone in the garden until he almost steps on him.

Tiny, battered, scuffed boots, harness of pockets, laurel of sun-struck blond hair, brown-green wool, stain of scarlet. Surely not much older than himself. Maybe dead.

Eren says not a word.

He stands over the Tommy, clutching his gun. He stands and looks him over, and he wants to sit down in this garden beside him and let the storm rage on without him.

The Tommy moves.

The Tommy sees him, sees his swastika, inhales sharply, begins to shimmy away except—

The dirt and ash and blood from scrapes on his chin and knuckles has all smeared together like paint on a canvas but his eyes pop. His eyes are a glacial blue. His eyes see into Eren’s soul and they condemn him for all his race’s sins from heaven down. With one arm he scrambles for his gun but he is not in the right physical state; he is injured, he is weakened. Eren catches the end of his rifle and carefully positions it just over his shoulder should it, by chance, go off anyway. But he can tell by the look on the Tommy’s young streaked face that it is not going to.

In broken English, Eren whispers on a threadbare voice, “I am a good person.”

The blond Tommy winces from his own breath, works his mouth a little, and spits on him.

Eren yanks the gun from his hands and gestures. He struggles to find the words. He knows them; they’re hiding somewhere in fear of his own kind. He manages to choke out, “See. Let me see.”

He wants to see the wound. He knows it’s fresh. The Tommy must have accepted his own end already, because he is letting Eren undress his upper half. He shudders under his touch. He bites his own lip hard enough to bruise. Eren does not like the way his fingers look against sun-kissed skin, thin frame but soldier’s muscles. Bloody and blackened, he finds the bullet lodged in the Tommy’s clavicle. God in heaven, it’s _really_ lodged in his clavicle; the bone itself has stopped it from completely entering the man’s body. Half its burst end is still protruding. The flesh cradling it there is swollen and already yellowing.

Eren digs in his own gear.

“ _Halt Sie!_ ” the Tommy hisses. “ _Was ist_ —”

“Shh,” Eren spits back, finding the pair of pliers. “I am a good person. Remember.”

The Tommy stops him with a fierce grip on the wrists, fingers biting flesh. His eyes are wild. He is not without hope or fight yet, and Eren likes that. He feels a brotherhood here, a unity. They are both victims of the world, after all. He can guess as much. They are both struggling not to win, but only to live.

Well, if one doesn’t fight, one cannot live.

The Tommy’s eyes rip him apart as he sneers in flat, simple German, “I don’t like the term ‘good person.’ It just means someone that’s good _for_ you. There is no one person who is good for everyone. None of us are good people anymore—”

Eren agrees, more or less. Scowling if only out of sheer stubbornness, he shakes loose of the Tommy’s grip. “ _Ja_ ,” he spits, “ _ich bin gut für Sie_ —for now, I am good for you, so _stop fighting me! Stellung!_ ”

Maybe the Tommy understands him; maybe he speaks too quickly, too gutturally. The Tommy’s hands drop away. He throws one arm over his eyes, knowing what is coming. As Eren spares a splash of precious water across the wound, the Tommy croaks, “ _Ich bin Armin_ —“

Eren smiles. _Armin_. It’s a name. It’s an offering of trust. There is shattered glass in the flowerbeds of the garden, humanizing such an inhuman time. There is something about the way Armin clutches onto him like a brother after a bad dream that really cuts Eren to the quick, breaks his heart, makes him ache—clutches him, fingers like bones, like steel pins, as Eren closes the pliers on the butt of the bullet and pulls. Presses the shoulder down with his free hand. Pulls. Armin is biting his own arm. His back his arching. He is breathing through the pain. _Pulls_.

The bullet brings a small sliver of bone with it, but it comes out.

Eren endeavors to close the hole in the skin. The heat from the shrapnel has seared it. It is still yellow—purple and yellow, like a stormy sunrise or wildflowers rippling in the country breeze as the Führer’s car rumbles away with his father inside. It makes him sick perhaps only because he cares; this carnage is not part of the scenery.

He cries.

He ties a ripped kerchief on it. He mutters that Armin needs to get this looked at as soon as possible, perhaps sewn up. He feels Armin trembling beneath his fingers like the last leaf on a tree in the autumn, terrified of being yanked from its safe branch, clinging for dear life in this garden of myth and madness.

The silence is unnerving.

He hides with Armin under the lattice until Armin breathes easy again. He is ghastly pale. His lashes flutter, gold at the base, gold as his hair, as he leans his head on Eren’s shoulder.

Eren whispers, carefully, and in English, “My name is Jäger. _Eren_.”

With a clammy thumb, Armin searches his face for tears to swipe away. But Eren isn’t crying anymore. Embarrassed, he moves away. Armin holds him in place. He wants to ask so many questions; he wants to know what has brought Armin to this garden here with him. He feels that Armin is tortured by the same sense of shared pain between them. He thinks about the letters from his father; he thinks about the bombs; he thinks about Herr Ackerman; he thinks about Jean, and what happened to Marco, and how Jean had cried in his arms before being sent to Dachau where he helps separate women from children from men and secretly slips extra rations of bread into the bricks in the walls of some of the barracks—or so he’d said the last time he’d seen Eren, and they’d dined in Munich, and Eren hadn’t been in uniform all the time yet and Jean’s eyes had been rimmed in red as he’d said, “Do not let anyone know who you really are, Eren. If anyone knows who you really are, they’ll destroy you. Like they destroyed Marco. I’ve helped destroy too many, Eren. It’s destroying me, too.”

He meant, of course, the love between men.

But Armin is so beautiful. Armin is like a spark of sunshine through the clouds, reflecting off a shard of glass in the street. Armin is hope. Armin is a Chopin Nocturne echoing through battle-torn streets. Armin is dance music on the radio. Armin is coffee after dinner. Armin is—

Eren kisses him under the ivy, in a moment of utter need. He can’t help it; war strips men to innocence and instinct, and it is innocence that propels him to the Tommy and it is instinct that craves a little human connection to get him through whatever comes next. It is innocence that believes kissing a beautiful boy is still worth it. It is instinct that sparks on their tongues as Armin yields and lets him move his lips against his, cradling him close, carefully, avoiding hurting the swollen knot of a bullet wound on his collarbone.

“I told you,” Eren whispers. “I am a good person.”

* * *

“ _Arlert! Arlert!_ ”

It’s Springer. Thank God for Springer.

Armin is still sitting in a blushing breathless daze under the latticework. The kisses burned themselves onto his mouth; he is reliving and retasting every moment of the strange sudden intimacy. It has reawakened something in him. It has stirred something in him. He has fallen head over heels for that touch, that magic, and he is going to dream about Eren Jäger to sleep tonight. Eren Jäger has probably saved his life and Armin’s only desire is to devote the rest of it to this angel of his. The fighting is so far away now, they are amongst the left for dead. Springer monkeys over the garden wall and rushes to his side, and as Springer’s back is turned Eren’s shadow in hiding darts for a successful exit.

Armin watches him with a strange dreamlike longing, a wistful understanding. Strong arms, dirty hands, mop of dark hair, blazing eyes.

 _I am a good person_.

“ _Armin_ ,” Conny Springer finally spits, snapping his fingers in Armin’s face. “Hey, are you all right? _Are you all right?_ ”

He sees the hole in Armin’s shoulder; he swears, colorfully. He wears guilt like a buzz-cut saint. He tries to help Armin stand. Armin can stand. Armin is revitalized. Armin is emboldened. Armin is clutching the small bronze key on a neck chain that Eren Jäger slipped him before Springer’s interruption. It’s a token, a promise, an oath to be kept.

 _Finden Sie mich_ _, wenn_ _das alles vorbei ist_ —

“Conny,” Armin whispers, moving with him through the falling dark to reconvene with Commander Smith. “Do you believe there are still good people?”

“Only on our side, baby,” Conny lilts through his teeth, smiling in that manic way of his, constantly on guard like a hunting dog. “Only on our side…”

Armin disagrees with that.

Armin wears the key on his throat and goes cross-eyed trying to look down his own body at the bullet wound in his clavicle. The pain has gotten so large now, it’s disappeared. Or it’s everywhere and he can’t tell the difference anymore.

_Find me when this is all over._

_Ja_.

* * *

 

**_End._ **


	3. 10 Dogs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> threesome. time era prompt.

**50s AU**

_LEVI/ERWIN/HANJI_

* * *

 

 

**i.**

In the front seat of the ’55 Imperial, the milkshake was melting. It had been forgotten, like the horror movie in black and white flickering across the drive-in movie screen.

_Creature from the Black Lagoon!_

* * *

**ii.**

Her skin was like silk, fever-hot and a dream to touch, his fingers sneaking up under the fine cotton hem of her shirt where it had been flirting with high-waisted trousers all night. Smooth, tan, tight over delicate ribs. She wasn’t wearing a bra and he could count the freckles on her upper abdomen—one, two, three… Number four was on her chest, on the succulent curve of flesh that was the top of her left breast. He made an L with both hands, one backwards, one right-facing, just to make sure. Ah, _his_ right, _her_ left.

Hanji laughed, a sound like burnt velvet. Her shades almost fell off the top of her head where they perched; her ponytail bounced. She waved her hands at him and lovingly rebuked, “Erwin, you’re drunk!”

* * *

**iii.**

Peaches and cream had been a childhood summer staple for Levi, like rope swings over the lake, and sneaking out to watch the stars, and it was peaches and cream he tasted on Hanji’s lower lip as he kissed her because it was the flavor of milkshake he’d bought her.

Peaches and cream, but it wasn’t summer again yet, just date night in a college city, and Erwin’s fingers moving up under his sweater gave him chills.

* * *

**iv.**

She said, “I’m studying humanistic psychology.”

She said, “I’m also studying Classical schools of thought.”

After a shot of whiskey and three cigarettes in a row, she cackled wildly and said, “I wanna see you two kiss!”

* * *

**v.**

They started slow, but within a sigh of each other they lost the pacing. They collided maybe a little too hungrily for the good of their images, reaching hands, craning bodies, practiced head tilt and nudge of noses as lips met—lips worked—mouths parted, tongues wound out, teeth knocked together like chins knocked together like hips began to knock together like two chips of flint.

Levi’s fingers tangled in Erwin’s hair, pulling loose gold and honey blond from the carefully-combed pattern.

Erwin’s strong arm encircled Levi’s waist; his wide firm hand grabbed a palmful of Levi’s thigh, right where it met his ass, hoisting him up ho-hum like he was trying to become one silhouette in the back of the Imperial. Unh, God, Levi melted at his domineering touch. _Unh_ , Christ, rugged sculpted man, little bit of peach fuzz under the chin, heartbeat below a skin-tight V-neck. If Apollo and James Dean were one and the same…

Little whimpers escaped on the backs of delighted gasps.

Low, desirous moans followed smack of lips and passionate purrs.

Bodies moved like cowboys breaking horses, cowboys who lied about it being their first rodeo.  

* * *

**vi.**

Erwin’s heart jumped to his throat. He laughed, crudely. Stuck out his jaw and flipped on all the man’s charm in his power. Flashed her a tender look of apology, hoped his dimples were on display. “Hanji,” he parried, “I can’t kiss _another man_. Levi won’t kiss _another man_. Why, that’s just—that’s _awful_ —”

Hanji snorted. She folded her arms on the leather upholstery and batted her eyelashes at him in a meticulous deconstruction of everything society demanded her to be as a woman. “You’re joking, right?” she hummed.

Levi stayed silent, hiding in the shadows of the backseat.

Hanji looked between them, uttering a scoff of a laugh. “Oh, come on, boys. You act like you’ve never done it before. Ah, ah, ah—” She held up a finger to halt Erwin’s counter before it even left his tongue. “Mama didn’t raise no fool.”

* * *

**vii.**

There were worlds of difference between them—Erwin Smith, the scat back; Levi Ackerman, a brooding bookworm.

It was right after high school graduation that they first discovered each other. In _that_ way, that was.

Since sophomore year they’d been planning together a wild, reckless road trip across the States that lasted the better part of a month, and would worry their parents and other loved ones sick. They were just passing through Boise and it was dark out when Erwin’s hand stretched across the gearshift and traveled up Levi’s leg, and Levi almost crashed the car, veering around disgruntled and surprised. He threw him a violently shocked look. But he didn’t say anything. He drove. He drove, and Erwin dropped kisses hot on his ear.

The empty road gave Levi the creeps, washed out in headlights. Some popular song warbled from the radio, and Erwin sang along but just sounded so gravelly and sad. They checked in somewhere, and with the key still in the door, Erwin took Levi’s face in his wide warm hands and kissed him.

Into the motel room they stumbled, beat from the day on the road, hoarse from shouting and laughing all day long. and—“Come on, Levi,” Erwin purred, and laid him down on the bed to love him.

These were the things men did not talk about in the day, because they belonged to the secrecy of the night.

The image of Erwin fresh out of the shower and drying his short hair, wrinkled white T-shirt loose from his trousers and checked socks over shining loafers, it scorched itself into Levi’s intimate memories.

Oh, summer. Peaches and cream, rope swings, starry skies, cross-country road trips and queer awakenings.

* * *

**viii.**

Cramped in the back of the ’55 Imperial, both Hanji and Levi fit on Erwin’s lap.

The heat of Hanji rolling her hips down on Erwin’s was almost unbearable; he kept Levi propped there behind her, hands up her shirt, by angling his knees.

The windows were fogging up.

Hanji let her hair loose and it tickled Erwin’s nose as they kissed. Tongues nudged, tangled, explored. Tiny moans became shy giggles. Hanji nipped at his lower lip; she tweaked his nipples as if to say, _I’m still in charge here._ She swatted around until finally they were in a position she judged appropriate to observe, and this was Levi in the middle grinding dick on dick against Erwin. Back arched, fingers knotted in a wrinkled shirt.

The windows were fogging.

Two cars over, a girl shrieked at the monster on the silver screen.

Hanji’s fingers tightened in Erwin’s hair as he went down between her knees, mouth hot and warm on the tweed of her trousers. God, screw the pants. They were in the way. She wanted his hand. She wanted his kiss. She wanted his fingers—

Levi treated her like a princess as Erwin’s hips knocked against his, and Hanji’s hands danced the dance of _eros_ and _amore_ , swaying and weaving above her head.

Her glasses were somewhere on the floor with Erwin’s shirt, and Levi’s belt.

* * *

**ix.**

It was a world of white picket fences and apple pie, drive-in movies, _American Bandstand_ , polio vaccinations. The Space Needle wasn’t even built yet. It was still titillating to see a girl’s curves in high-waisted jeans.

Erwin wasn’t discontent to sit down at the piano and play a little Chopin for his parents’ dinner guests, while his sister recited poetry, to show just how cultured they were.

Levi hid his copy of Thomas Mann’s _Death in Venice_ under his bed like his friends hid their nudie mags.

Hanji was worried for her father, that he would become just another face in the massive overcoated sea of commuters every day downtown, punching away on typewriters or being crushed to death by stacks of office paperwork. Though she did appreciate the distinguished look of a man in rolled-up sleeves and loosened ties. Hanji didn’t care about skirts.

Audrey Hepburn would say it best in a few years, in _Breakfast at Tiffany’s_ :

 _There’s such a lot of world to see_ …

* * *

**x.**

She was beautiful, asleep against Levi. She was all soft curves and peaceful brow. She was wonderment and merriment and dreams, fingers curled limply against the car door.

Levi was beautiful, in the moonlight. He was no longer grim; he was vulnerable, and fragile, like a flower to crush underfoot.

Maybe it was the stars, maybe it was the alcohol, maybe it was the lingering taste of his mouth while Levi’s hands moved and her mouth worked between his—

Whatever it was, it was sweet and precious and his alone, and Erwin fell in love with it.

* * *

**_End._ **


End file.
